Usage Statistics have taken the industry by storm. In light of this trend, Swets teamed up with Library Journal to take a deeper look into how metrics have grown to their current state and what alternative measures we can expect in the future.

Click here to read our blog or watch the video detailing the journey of three information professionals as they strive to prove value in their libraries.

HathiTrust recently launched Zephir, its new system for managing bibliographic metadata. The University of California's CDL (California Digital Library), one of the founding institutions of HathiTrust, developed Zephir to store, manage, and export metadata to bibliographic records that accompany digital items in HathiTrust's repository of about 11 million volumes.

The Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence (ISCE) launched EPI-Search, a service it calls the internet's first virtual reference librarian. EPI-Search is designed to provide the contextual expertise of reference librarians who have been replaced by internet searches.

Serials Solutions, a ProQuest company, released the first production service from its Intota cloud-based library services platform: Intota Assessment gives libraries a total picture of their monographs and serials in electronic and print formats so they can make data-driven decisions about collection development.

LexisNexis signed an agreement with Follett Higher Education Group to offer more ebook access to law students and professors. Follett joins LexisNexis' stable of ebookstore partners in offering students codes for LexisNexis ebooks in Follett's brick-and-mortar stores and online at efollett.com.

As another year comes to a close, it's time to reflect on the major information industry happenings that NewsBreaks covered in 2013. Here's an overview of the newsworthy trends, events, and topics from the past year.

ITI Blogs

If you regularly read blogs, add these to your reader:

ITI Books Blog – booksblog.infotoday.com – news, observations, and commentary from the authors, editors, and publishers of Information Today, Inc.'s many book offerings.

Library Stuff –librarystuff.net – the library blog dedicated to resources for keeping current and professional development, written by Steven M. Cohen.

InfoToday Europe Blog – infotodayeurope.com – The latest news, analysis and opinion on the information industry in Europe and the UK.

Business of Video blog – blog.streamingmedia.com – Daily posts about the online video industry, business trends and analysis, market data, and research as well as the online video business models in the media and entertainment, broadcast, publishing, advertising and enterprise industries.

destinationCRM Blog – destinationcrmblog.com – a blog from the editors of CRM magazine, dedicated to providing Customer Relationship Management information in a timely manner to connect decision makers and providers.

SpeechTech Blog – speechtechblog.com – updates on speech technology and its applications in daily life. Covers everything from ASR to VUI, with lots of links, threads, and even a few pictures thrown in for good measure.